


The Principles of Lust

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mentions of het, bottom!Thor, less crack and more angst, mentions of other minor pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In answer to this prompt:</p><p> </p><p>  <i>for christmas i would like a fic in which thor walks in on loki fucking some really buff guy very hard and spends the next week uncomfortably aroused until loki comes around and finally sticks his dick in him and totally takes him apart</i></p><p> </p><p>In which Thor finds some hard questions raised, and Loki is all to happy to shove the answers down his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Principles of Lust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thorduna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorduna/gifts).



> So, the lovely [Diana mentioned a prompt just before Christmas](http://takemetothedungeons.tumblr.com/post/70883752370/for-christmas-i-would-like-a-fic-in-which-thor), and it ate away at my mind over the holiday. So when I got home, I got to typing, and this is what resulted. I think the idea was to go for crack; unfortunately my brain's wired for angst, so I just had to make Thor's life miserable. This was definitely a fic way out of my comfort zone, but hey. She's the most wonderful and supportive and talented person, and I felt I owed her a little something for all the kindnesses she has done me. Hopefully this is something like what you wished for. xxx

The tankards before them bled condensation onto their woven mats; the scent of smoke invaded his nostrils with casual disregard for any need he might have to breathe without choking. Yet what troubled him more was the awkward conversation that remained unspoken, hanged upon the air like a condemned man dangling from his gibbet.

Finally Thor’s hand curled about the cool metal. “I do not seek to judge.”

The other warrior had always been a large man, hulking over both friend and foe alike – but in this moment he had been greatly diminished. Shaggy hair shielded the pale blue-green of his eyes even as he glanced up between the strands. It reminded Thor of a hound he had known as a child. The creature had been old before Thor had ever been anything but young, and though his hunting days had been long past he had always watched the others called away. Longing and despair had turned his dark irises to liquid, snout rested in mournful misery upon his paws.

The same desolation of this man now sat so at odds with the way Thor had last seen him: head thrown back in pleasure, the strain displaying corded muscles of throat and thigh and arms. Every inch of his great body had been pulling at the ropes that held him down, stretched him apart. Yet nothing in the act had seemed unwanted. He had been restrained, but the shout that had been ripped free from his throat had been that of a man made gloriously free.

If he tightened his fingers any further, he knew he would shatter even this thick pebbled glass. “Loki has ever…been able to talk others into seeing things as he wishes,” Thor began again, awkward; the man’s shoulders sank further, face dipping completely from view.

“You will tell Týr of this.”

“No.” He spoke too quickly; it only made it all the more obvious how slowly all other words came to his thickened tongue. “I…it is not his concern.”

“Because it is not the concern of the Einherjar? Or because it involves your brother?”

Thor jerked in his seat, for all the words had held more despair than accusation. “It is not…this is not about Loki.” And yet the beauty of his brother in that moment haunted him even now: wild, yes, but not wanton. Everything about him in motion had been nothing but the fiercest of control – even the way the green silk of his robe had hung upon long limbs. Unbelted, when he moved each step would flicker the flash of leg, the flushed heat of a standing cock. Slick with oil, its intent had been anything but unknown.

“I simply wish…” _…that I had not seen?_ “…that you would have taken more care. Such matters are not kindly looked upon.”

Sagging, the man seemed to shrink further yet, wizened and wearied by a burden beyond Thor’s own ken. “This I have always known.”

“Loki plays a dangerous game.” His insistence tasted of ionised air and silver rain, impossible tempered storm. “I would not see a good man hurt.”

“You do not trust your own brother’s intentions?”

The churning in his stomach rose, turned to bile in his throat. But then Thor could not deny that everything had been so very strange that day. Only the vaguest thought of speaking with his brother had led him away from the training fields, the mid-summer sun fading to but a distant memory as he walked the cool cloistered corridors. The wards upon his brother’s chamber doors had for but a moment rejected his entrance. Then they had released and he had entered Loki’s demesne without a word.

Honesty meant he could not deny that he had known from the sounds of the opened bedchamber doors what went on inside. Yet like a dreamer he had kept moving. There Thor had stood just beyond the threshold and observed what moved within. A man oiled and slick writhed upon the bed with wrists and ankles bound, straining against silken bonds. Yet they might have been iron instead for the way muscles heaved beneath golden skin; the mass of him seemed an earthy spirit caught in mortal chains, shimmering hair dripping with sweat, the scent of sweet oil and deep musk heavy upon the air.

And the dark-haired one moved like a shadow between them. In a silent stalk he crossed the floor, longer fingers curving about the root of his cock. The slide of it seemed so easy, key pressed and twisted in an already opened lock; only then had Thor turned away, stumbling blindly around the afterimage of an arching back, low laughter pulsing beneath the words that echoed yet in his ears.

_Do not fear. I shall make everything better. Give over to me, and take what you need. Know I can be everything you desire – and that your desire is everything, to me._

Thor’s ale remained mostly undrunk. The froth had died down now, beads upon the metal slipping down to pool upon the rough rude wood. He watched it ripple with kaleidoscopic reflection, every image within warped and unrecognisable.

“He is as fickle as he is capricious,” Thor said eventually, every word bearing the bitterness of rancid honey. Still the man would not meet his eyes, the cup in his hands seeming very small for all it yet overflowed with his own untouched ale.

“You wish me to stay away from him.”

His words held the dull gleam of tarnished silver. “It will be better this way,” Thor said, but still his abdomen felt to be the birthplace of serpents and flatworms, tangled and twisted. But he said nothing more, lips dry and hands tight over his tankard as the man stood. He needed not to bow – it was not a matter of war nor of state, they were but two men in a dark corner, conversing over ale. And his head had bent so low Thor could not have imagined it would go any lower, had he not seen it for himself.

“Of course, my prince.”

The last Thor saw of him that night was a pair of broad shoulders, hunched over a form that felt hollowed out and empty, drifting aimless through a press of patrons and prostitutes until the darkness swallowed him whole.

 

*****

 

Like all children, Thor had only imagined the glories of a kingship promised him from the golden cradle. It had been years before he had thought upon duties such as this: the rain, the chill, the weight of a kingdom’s grief borne upon his own shoulders while he held his head high and taught the art of noble sacrifice to those who already knew it far better than he ever might. The scent of wet wool clashed with the salt of tears, though he had not shed one himself. He saw them all the same, upon the faces of those upon the shore: the young sister, a mourning mother. This warrior’s father had long been gone, dead in a border skirmish in Nornheimr many a season ago.

Yet the clash had lost them but few of Asgard’s own. Each of them lay now alone in a burning longboat, the gentle sway of the star-sea guiding them to where water flowed into the skies both above and below. Remembered words shuddered through him, a prophecy spoken unknowing.

_It will be better this way._

The dark figure at his side spoke not at all, a shadow as sleek as the glide of a leviathan through the deepest darkest waters. He did not accompany them to the taverns, but Thor had made his way through only two rounds before Loki slid in beside him. Ignoring the salutations and raised glasses – and sidelong narrowed glances – of the company at his table, Loki leaned close, breath tickling Thor’s ear with the cool scent of winter.

“I wonder if I might have a word.”

The chill of it was a faint shiver through vein and muscle. Unable to meet his eyes, Thor considered offering him a drink; it might make him stay or go while offering no real answer to his request. But then it felt too much like a memory: the scent of smoke, the pulse of voices, the high laughter of paid amusement. Even as his fingers fisted, Thor stood, shook his head. “Perhaps we should go elsewhere.”

The doors swung closed on the hails of friends and strangers alike, leaving them to walk together and alone. The nods from those they passed were but fleeting; rain had blown in across the skies, and now hammered rooftop and road alike. Even with his oilskin cloak drawn around him, the hood pulled down low over his hairline, Thor shivered with the damp of it. A storm not of his own creation, it was the chill kiss of a stranger forced upon unwilling skin.

Few chose to walk down by the water in such weather, but Thor’s eyes lingered upon the waves. Loki had led them down here a-purpose, clouds chasing one another across the sky like feral children in the rising winds. The words could be no surprise when they came.

“Do you feel responsible for what happened?”

Yet Thor still had come up with no answer. “I…”

“I know you spoke with him. Before all this.” With the hood of his own cloak hung loose down his back, rivulets of rain sketched silver filaments upon the darkness of his hair. When Loki turned his head, the night had stolen the green of his irises, leaving nothing but darkness instead. “Do you know the circumstances of his passing? Or was it deemed unfit for the delicate ears of our crown prince?”

One foot followed the other, his eyes fixed upon where the rain gleamed upon the cobbles in even the dim lights of the waterfront. “I am not certain what you mean.”

Thunder rumbled in the long distance. Loki’s laughter scorned its faint drone, drowning it in mirthless sound. “You are one accustomed to the truth, brother. Do not attempt to dance around it so! Graceful as you are with sword and hammer, you are clumsy as a newborn in wordplay.”

Irritation burned, turned to ashes in his mouth. “Then what is it you are trying to say to me?” he demanded, stopping dead; his hand hovered just above his brother’s upper arm, fingers twitching to close, to drag. But he did not, and Loki laughed again.

“What did _you_ say to _him_?” One step closer, and his eyes almost seemed to flash crimson in the too-yellow glow of the lamppost they stood beneath. Raindrops, lit up like fireflies, danced about his dark head as he bared his teeth. “I know you spoke to him in the lower city – warrior to warrior you were, hunched over your tankards in some shadowed tavern.” The twist of his features was an unnatural mask, vicious and demanding. “But tell me then – _whose_ honour was it that so concerned you? His? Mine? Or perhaps it was only ever your own!”

Thor had long ago been taught the power and necessity of surrender, of retreat – but it had never been in his nature to believe it would ever be necessary. His muscles burned now, begged him to turn and run even as he held still, even as he did not know what it was he wished to run from. A truth carried in one’s mind might never be escaped, after all.

“It was not a question of honour.”

The hoarse words only made Loki toss his head, once-slick hair now rising in chaotic cloud, face like blue-veined marble. “Then how did you justify your interference in his life?” he snarled, and then he smiled. Snakes held the same expression before a strike. “…or was it _mine_ you were so concerned for?”

Thor had taken the Einherjar warrior into the low city to warn him away from such behaviour. He had never had any intention of speaking to Loki about any of it. In truth he had not even recognised the feral creature that had stalked across those familiar chambers. It seemed better that way, given that even now the memory of every motion twisted low in his gut, his own cock twitching to remember the bob of the other’s, the flow of muscle under thin silk, hands laid upon the restrained gleam of golden muscle...

He bowed his head, voice the rasp of flesh over ground glass. “You are my brother.”

“That does not make you my keeper.”

Open palms lay before him, gathering but little rain before it slid away between callused fingers. They could be so skilled in their workings. But this was not his storm, and his tongue lay like dead weight in his mouth.

“Did you like it?”

Lightning cracked across the sky, hair flying as his head jerked up. “ _What_?”

“What you saw?” And there was a malicious kind of patience in the repetition, eyes knowing. When Thor’s face turned to the water, he found it heaving and uneasy, surface broken by the lash of rain and wind.

“I hardly believe that is the question here!”

“Oh, but it is.” Thor shuddered at Loki’s sudden proximity, skin alight with the crawl of filamented energy that shivered with his low laughter. “Because _he_ liked it. That is why he came to me.”

He stumbled two steps forward, hands blindly reaching out; the force at which knuckles hit the walkway’s barrier would bruise. Thor clenched back tight enough to do the same to the gold. “I do not understand,” he growled, the cornered animal’s last defiant stand; Loki drifted close beside him, leaned against the balustrade with a considering expression even as the rain drenched them both to the skin before settling in their bones.

“Oh, I think you do. You just wish you did not.” Tilting his head, Loki frowned. “He was murdered, you know.”

“He died in battle.”

Waving away the hoarse words with one gloved hand, Loki’s eyes rolled skyward. “That is what they tell those who need such tales – how else could they ignore the tarnish beneath the golden leaf that lies so thin over the black heart of this realm?” The hardening of his voice held the firebirth of volcanic stone. “He sought relief from the wrong person. And you know yourself that word spreads fast amongst those who live and eat and sleep in such close quarters.”

“I do not believe you.” The path of the longboat was white-tipped wave now, restless and uneasy. “He was brought home in honour.”

“Because where secrets move quick, they might be stopped even faster.” Twisting, Loki leaned back further, face turned to the light. He did not even squint beneath it. “They would not stand for his deviancy, but they would not have it known that it had even existed amongst their company.”

“There was nothing to know. I told no one of what I had seen.”

“I know you did not.” When he looked down again, Thor could read nothing of his expression; Loki’s face had become a mummer’s set mask of chiaroscuro impassivity. “But one cannot expect another to cease a behaviour that is so ingrained in them simply because it inconveniences the archaic mores of its people.”

In the water, light shifted and changed; the boats had long fallen. Thor’s throat itched with songs unsung. The words of the warrior’s final dirge had been carved upon his heart as a child, and yet he had been silent while others had raised their voices in their honour.

Loki’s own voice was as velvet as it had always been, thoughtful and easy. “He tried hard, I should think. He told me that he would not ask of me again what I had so willingly given.” His own back remained turned on the water, eyes fixed upon his brother alone. “But that could not stop him from wanting it.”

Thor could not look at him, though it seemed as though Loki looked right through him now. And inside he cringed away, even as his mind lingered upon the beauty of it: long fingers pale over sweat-slick skin, taking apart what might never have been whole otherwise. And he closed his eyes, felt the cool rain pool in their hollows when he turned his face to the uncaring sky.

“He asked the wrong questions of the wrong person.” Leathers creaked in the shift of a lithe body against the balustrade separating walkway from water. “And now he lies dead for the wrong reasons, lauded for the wrong deeds.” For the first time genuine anger crackled in his voice. “How could that ever strike you as right?”

Despair and desperation both spun him around, hands bunched to fists at his side. “I just do not understand!”

The wind shrieked with him, sorrowful and furious. Loki stood unmoved at its centre, silver-touched leather and metal. “Of course you do not.” Placating, now, he took one step forward, eyes fixed, never letting him go. And he smiled, again. “ _You_ are everything that you were born to be. The perfect warrior. The perfect son. The perfect prince. Of course you will one day be the perfect husband and father.” And Thor could not retreat even as one hand rose, cupped his face so very gently, eyes wide and welcoming in all the wrong ways. “You do not know what it is, to wish to throw that all away. To be nothing of what is expected from you.” So close he had come, knowing in his sorrow. “To fall and love it. To hit the ground and shatter and realise that this is all you needed. To be broken. And not to care.”

He trembled beneath his brother’s touch. “Loki.”

And he only smiled, fingers gentle where they traced trails of rain upon his skin. “He asked me for what he wanted. And I gave it to him.”

Searching, Thor saw little in those eyes but open invitation, dark and desiring. To look into that gaze was to stand upon the event horizon of a dying star, falling forever and never reaching its centre.

“You are never so generous without expectation of repayment,” he whispered, and Loki chuckled.

“No.” The hand moved again, slipping about his neck so fingertips might tangle in the hair at the base of his skull. When he spoke, his lips brushed over skin, gliding close to his ear so he might whisper there, “But perhaps while he wanted to be broken, I simply wished to be the one who did the breaking.”

Something in his own heart snapped then, frayed and bleeding as it had been. “And perhaps that is why I feared for him.” Turning away, he set his jaw, let his nails dig into the filigree of the balustrade. “You forget, Loki. I am your brother. I know you will try anything once, if only to see what will happen.”

Loki did not seek to touch him again; he could not even be grateful for that, his skin desperate for touch even as it shied away from its consequence. Yet Loki did not leave him, a solid shadow of voice and dark promise two steps at his back. “But it is you who lets things go without thought, knowing that what you need will always be given to you.” And his voice had turned very hard now, unforgiving as the pelagic ocean. “For the rest of us, we might have to hold on to whatever we find, for fear it might never come again.”

Thor turned again. But Loki had gone. With a shiver he rested his eyes upon the star-sea one final time. He found no comfort in what he saw. A long night lay ahead, and the waves of the waters were still rising.

 

*****

 

The moon made its turn over the skies once, twice, the dead passing into glorious memory. Any period of mourning could never linger, given there was only joy to be taken in knowing that sons and brothers and fathers and lovers now feasted with heroes at the high tables of Valhalla. Dressed in full armour with Mjölnir at his hip, Thor left the city. Loki remained, but with the Warriors Three and Sif and a phalanx of Einherjar, and the company of Freyr and his comrades, Thor could not be said to be alone. Still he felt to be so, even before the whispers began to swirl about the camp. Freyr had a youth with him. His dark eyes danced with mischief, his limbs long and lithe; a squire might always be in the company of his master, but then there was more than one who wondered what services might be performed in the privacy of a tent in the darkest hours of night and morning.

“But then, he’s only a boy,” one man had shrugged, craggy face a shifting series of shadow and crimson in the light of the fire. “When he is a man, he will have left such things behind.”

“A pretty boy, too,” another acknowledged, and the curve of his own smile had held a cruel and bloodied edge. “I might taste it myself, had we not better waiting nearby.”

Thor had turned away, and shortly taken to his own tent. Fandral’s breathing had been slow and rhythmic in sleep, but Thor found no rest of his own. Instead his mind lingered upon the thought of Freyr and his youth – but he did not imagine a lithe body pressed beneath the greater weight of Álfheimr’s prince. Instead he saw a laughing grin beneath dark hair, slim body snapping hips as a cock drove between muscled buttocks, callused hands fisted in furs and the low groan of surrender tasting like sweet summer harvest.

A sprawling village welcomed them at the end of their brief campaign, the marauders driven back into the barren foothills. Tavern wenches in such a place numbered only few, but there were both maidens and matrons happy enough to serve them – both their dinner, and what might follow should the visitor prove winsome enough. A young woman kept Thor’s company from early in the evening, red of hair and buxom above a slim waist and long legs.

To the borrowed upstairs chamber he was to share with the others they retreated, his hand tight about her hips. There in that candlelit calm, her green eyes gleamed like those of some great cat as she rode him in slow, sinuous motion. She had stripped herself bare; he had opened his trousers just enough to work his stiff prick free. Only after he found his first release did she work him from his light armour and clothing with the easy skill of a squire, encouraging him to lie on his stomach.

Her strong fingers moved knowing and kneading over the ache of muscle; she worked upon a loom, she said. Carding and weaving wool all the day, the skill one lauded throughout the realm as almost holy. Beginning at shoulders, she worked in lines both long and short, circling ever downward; there they lingered over his ass. The tension rose, again; with a long chuckle her fingers slid between, cupping his balls. When he groaned, hips rolling upon the bed, she pushed at him until he lay again on his back, straddling him with strong thighs so she might take him into her again. But Thor, this time, rolled her over, fucked her into the mattress until she begged him to slow. He had dipped his head to her, tasting himself as he drove her to heights she claimed never to have known before.

After, she rose upon an elbow, the wild curl of her hair gleaming ember-bright about bare shoulders. “Is something the matter?”

Thor only stared at the ceiling. His mouth tasted of ash and smoke, underlain with the salt of tears not his own. “No,” he murmured, and did not object when she fisted his cock. But no matter how she worked him, he did not rise again that night. Eventually she gathered her clothes and he rolled himself into his furs, finding no sleep in the rest of that night.

Days later they returned to the Glaðsheimr, taking their leave of Freyr and his company with the usual ribald jests and raucous farewells. As with any return from battles well fought and otherwise, they spent their afternoon in the yards; there they relived moments both glorious and not, making their reports in motion as well as word. But when it was done, Thor bathed alone in his chambers. Troubled as his thoughts were, he could not claim to be in the mood for the communal baths. Having dressed and braided his hair, he still returned to the lower city.

The others had gathered in a tavern that had long become an old favourite. Fandral’s favoured barmaids plied their trade within its smoke-riddled walls, a pair of sisters who often shared him. In the privacy of their chambers they would take pleasure in each other, too, for the gratification of the man they drew together into their bed. Fandral had spoken of such nights with great relish. Thor had shared the company of more than one woman himself, but then he had always been the centre of their attentions. Yet thinking upon it now, he found himself uneasy.

_We would condemn a man for taking his pleasure in another, and yet women might take their pleasure in one another if it is for our own?_

But upon this eve Fandral had only one companion – and Thor’s breath caught to see it. His old friend had one arm draped casual around Loki’s shoulders. His brother leaned so easy into the other man: laughing, unforced, his eyes danced with the quicksilver mirth he so often kept to himself these days. Then those eyes fixed upon him and Thor’s heart clenched tight. He had not even seen Loki since his return from Álfheimr.

“Ah, brother,” he called, eyebrow raised. “Finally you arrive.”

Though others were already hailing their prince, Thor’s eyes remained upon his brother alone. “Loki.”

“Fandral has been telling me of your little adventures.” One hand rose, barely covered the yawn that escaped. “Fascinating as they seem to have been,” he added, idle, and Fandral’s arm tightened to something closer to a chokehold.

“Oh, are we keeping you up, Loki?” Giving the other man a little shake, Fandral's lips curled beneath the fine styling of his moustache. “Are you already dreaming of your bed, little prince?”

“One might imagine so.”  Scathing as the tone might be, Thor knew it to be nowhere near its usual strength. It prickled over his own skin instead, a cold kind of static that had him shifting uneasily in his chair. Loki’s eyes were very green upon him as he raised his hand to the barkeep.

“Another round?”

Drink after drink found its way to his mouth and then the restless roil of stomach and gut, and yet the alcohol never seemed to have any effect on him. Every glance to where Loki and Fandral swayed ever further into one another sobered his thoughts, stiffened his muscles. When he stood, it was with a distinct oscillation – but the nauseated sensation came from some other source entire.

“I am for my bed,” he announced, and Fandral’s protest rang out across the entire tavern.

“The night is but young, and so are we!” he called, and raised his own ale high, slopping it over hand and sleeve. “Come, take another round with us! It is but a lull; your mood can but improve from here!”

He only shook his head. “I am tired.” Turning, he could not look any longer at brother and friend. “I will take my leave.”

And yet a figure appeared at his elbow, low-voiced and amused. “Let me escort you, brother.” When Thor did not look down, he chuckled. “You seem unwell.”

“No. It is rare for you to enjoy yourself so. Stay.”

Thor knew Loki to be smiling even though he could not bear to look at him. “You are my brother. Is it not my responsibility to look out for you?”

Their return to the palace did not take Thor to his own chambers, as he had intended. Rather Loki’s hand upon his elbow had guided them to his own. Much as he knew it a mistake to follow, Thor had felt odd relief in letting this go. In darkness, without lighting a single lamp nor candle, Loki led them both to the balcony of his bedchamber. The city pulsed like a living thing beneath their gaze; the water lay far distant tonight, the sky a dazzling kaleidoscope of star and galaxy and planet and supernova. Thor’s skin still shifted with a crawling chill.

“Are you worried that I shall corrupt Fandral, too?”

Loki had spoken with casual curiosity, but even Thor could hear the low bitterness of it. “It is not a matter of corruption,” he began slow, painful; Loki’s reply hit him like a slap.

“Then what _is_ it?”

Thor had only silence. It impressed his brother not a bit, Loki’s voice turning very cold.

“If we both enjoy ourselves and each other, then what crime is there in what we do together?”

The answer came hard, hurting. He could only see now in his mind the bowed head of a grieving mother, the tear-tracks upon a sister’s pale cheeks. “I do not speak of crimes,” he said, and Loki’s scoffing laughter cut him dead.

“Then why act as though I do something worthy of punishment?” he demanded. “Merely lacking an understanding of why one might seek such pleasures does not give you the right to deny them to another.”

Thor did not even know why he asked this question. “You did not love him?”

“Végestr?” The name rolled over Loki’s tongue, careless as a raindrop that could possess no other fate save for shattering impact upon the ground. “It was never a matter of _love_.”

His fingers clenched tight, loosened again; without Mjölnir’s shaft to hand, his palm could never feel anything but empty. “You never do anything without reason,” he said slow and strange. “If he had not been found out the way he was, you would yourself have held that information over him as suited your needs.”

It could not be strange, that Loki should sound more curious than hurt. “Do you really think so little of me?”

“Then why do such a thing?”

It could have been disappointment, flickering in those eyes. “I told you,” Loki murmured, voice very cold. “He took his pleasure in being under me. I took mine in being over him. That seems a fair enough exchange, does it not?”

Thor remembered red hair, the tremor of pale thighs and the weight of breasts in his hands, the moans as a cunt had drawn from him his release. “You could have as much with any woman,” he said, hoarse, and Loki snorted.

“A woman is no more a man than a man is a woman. But even then to say so is to over-simplify. There is more to this than what is between one’s legs.” Now his lips curled about a smile unintended, unamused. “It is what is in the heart, in the mind, that matters most. Desire is not all in the thrust of a cock into a cunt, brother.”

Silence, again, moved between them. Loki twisted, leaned back against the railing, arms crossed over his chest.

“No, I did not love him. But I did hold a certain fondness for the great idiot.” This time the deprecation of his smile seemed turned inward, eyes going distant and strange. “He had a good heart. I seem to have a weakness, for that.”

“And now you wish for Fandral.”

Loki’s gaze focused upon him, his snort sharp. “I have little interest in his heart – should he even have one, which he has given us all occasion to doubt. But he is ever and always a creature who wishes for all experience. We share that much, at least.”

His hands had clenched tighter about Loki’s shoulders before he had even realised he had moved. “Do _not_.”

“Why not?” Impassive, Loki made no motion to break free. “We are free to fuck who we want.”

“No, we are not,” he said, harsh and heavy, and Loki tilted his head.

“What makes you say that?”

Thor only stared, throat closed over, heart a jackrabbit beat in his chest. And Loki sighed, a hand rising, laying upon his face.

“Thor?”

He swallowed hard, head swimming, the very realm itself tilting beneath his uncertain feet. “Oh, _Norns_.”

“Ask me.”

Thor looked up, even as he felt as though the realms entire tried to drag him down and under. “Ask you what?”

“For what you want.”

He burned alive, tied to a stake instead of prone in his longboat. And yet the moment he thought the words they fell from his lips, such easy confession under the torture of truth.

“I want you to fuck me.”

A slow smile moved over his lips. “I know.”

“ _Loki_.”

An eyebrow cocked high. “Thor?”

His voice broke. “You are my brother.”

Fingers first came to rest light upon his cheek, and then Loki’s palm cradled his jaw. “And it is my job to take care of you,” he said, soft, delicate, knowing. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“I am your _older_ brother.”

Loki leaned closer yet, eyes searching. “And sometimes you are tired. And that is all right.” His lips ghosted over his own, demand and gift alike. “Let me do this for you.”

Shame washed hot over him, but it burned out where desire only blazed higher yet. Thor’s whisper was all dark, desperate relief. “What do I do?”

Even in the darkness, Loki’s eyes shone with a light taken from some power deep within. “Take off your clothes.”

Thor could not allow a single thought to enter his mind as he stripped naked. Yet when he turned, uncertainty hit him with the force of a tidal wave. Loki had moved away, and in doing so had taken something from a closet. In some ways it resembled a low narrow table, with four legs and a flat top surface. Yet the legs flared out at angles while the upper board was just a shade narrower than his own torso, the entire contraption standing about as high as his waist.

“What is it?” he asked, but his eyes had already moved to the ropes Loki held in his gloved hands.

“You want to surrender everything.” His smile burned like the sun, even in this, the deepest hour of night. “Let me take it from you.”

When he moved forward, Loki encouraged him down, bending him forward over the central plank. As the rope worked in loops about his wrists, Thor realised for the first time that it held a slight angle, his ass held slightly higher than his shoulders. Already the increasing flow of blood to his head dizzied him, even as leather-encased fingers worked over first wrist, then ankle. Cool breath ghosted along his thighs where the angle of the legs forced them slightly apart. When he shifted his hips, testing his bonds, he felt sudden friction on his hardening cock from the padded end. A hand over his flanks, his back, stilled him.

“Is this how you always do it?” he asked, so uncertain the words were the merest of whispers; Loki laughed, low and lovely.

“No.” His fingers traced runes upon his skin, slick and soft. “No, I saved this one for you.”

His voice broke. “How did you _know_?”

“Oh, brother.” Lips moved over shoulderblade, fingers strong and teasing in his hair, tugging at his scalp. “I’ve always known.”

“And I’ve always wanted you,” he whispered, the confession both so hard and so very, very easy. Loki moved, came about to stand just before him.

“Yes.” Bending forward from the waist, he pressed a kiss to his lips, both slow and mocking. Thor’s cock twitched, so hard already, and all from only the lightest of touches; they might even have been called innocent. Certainly Loki still remained dressed in his leathers, thoughtful and contemplative. But his hair was already working loose from its slicked-back style, the natural curl faintly returning with the risen humidity of the thickening air. A rumble of distant thunder curled his lips around the whiteness of his teeth.

“I want you to let it all go.”

Thor shivered with the distant brontide. “I do not know how.”

“Then is it not lucky,” he murmured as he drew forth a vial from unseen pocket, “that you have me to show you?”

Oiled fingers moved gentle in a maddening skim, teasing and light. Then with a shift, they ghosted low, moved over his hardening shaft. Trailing backward and up, those fingers pressed against perineum, and then to a tight ring of muscle. “I would take it slow,” Loki whispered, “but I have waited too long – and so, too, have you.” And he laughed. “Bear down, brother. It will be easier that way.”

It seemed too soon indeed, but the longest of his fingers slipped inside all the same. The sensation of it felt alien: this oddity of taking something into himself. Yet in a peculiar way he did not feel as though he had been defeated, or that he had surrendered some precious thing. Rather he took it deep, as if laying a claim upon what he had permitted within his body. He did not know if that was how a woman experienced such when she invited a man inside her. But perhaps it had nothing to do with womanhood. The need just burned in him: and he answered it with sharing of one’s self, a giving over.

_And we might call this a taking, too._

Three fingers had moved in now, and then with a twist Loki laughed aloud. Thor arched his back, though he could hardly go far. With cock dragging along the frame, he bucked his hips. A moment later Loki muffled the motion by curving down over his body; a gentling hand worked his hair back from his face with low amusement.

“Is it too much?” Leaning close, his full weight at rest upon him, Loki kissed the nape of Thor’s neck. Leather stuck to his skin, shifting with harsh purpose at every faint shift, so at odds with the silk of his whisper. “But no, no – it’s not enough, not yet. You will be split upon my cock, and you will love it.”

A low groan escaped him, sharpening with another twist of his brother’s wrist. The fingertips working inside him sought deeper, then drew backward; so quick they passed over a place that jerked him upward, white behind his eyes. Then, they paused, rubbing so they might call up soft friction. Thor had no idea what was better: the rub of the frame against his dick, or the pulse of the fingers in his arse. The burn of the rope around his wrists grew warmth and slick as he yanked and twisted. He bled, perhaps. But he could not free himself. And it did not matter. He only _wanted_ , and that was enough.

The skin of his brother’s smooth cheek, damp and soft, dragged over the bristle of his own; Loki nuzzled up against him in the fashion of a great panther marking its territory, his voice low hunting rumble. “Come for me.” The words trembled like a grace note, laughter but a beat behind; his fingers, too, moved with the skill of a bard upon the strings of his instrument. “It will be easier, if you are relaxed. Boneless. Broken by just my touch, my fingers deep within.” Teeth closed over skin, bit deep enough to draw blood. “ _Then_ I will give you my cock. And I will let you know how it is truly to fall.”

Whimpering, Thor could find no words. He could only work his hips: back, forward. The slide of his pelvis drove his cock against the friction of the covered frame. Release came hard and sudden, his voice a broken ruin of consonant and long-held vowel; it might have trailed into silence, if not for the low laughter of his younger brother.

“Oh, have you any idea how beautiful you are, like this?” Bent over him, Loki pressed them together in what felt like the irreversible melding of skin and muscle. The coolness of his lips burned a path in kisses, beginning at the knob at the base of Thor’s neck; the darting tongue tripped over the ladder of his backbone as if making of it a song. And then, it moved yet further down: over the fluttering muscle of his hole, ending with teasing flick to his balls. Then a slap landed upon the trembling muscle of his thighs.

“Golden and slick. Tied down. And all for me.” Teeth nipped at the place where buttock met thigh, the crease damp and trembling. “How I wish to take a cock made of gold and glass and push it inside you! Then I might just leave it there, undoing your wrists, your ankles. I’d watch you dress, bending and twisting, all with little gasps from the shift of it in you. And then I would walk as I always do, your little shadow, two steps behind my perfect golden brother.” Fingers lingered over his skin, chasing droplets of sweat through valley and over hill. “And only I would see the twitch, the sigh, the way your pupils blow wide every time you sit, you stand, you take even a step.” Laughter gurgled low in his throat. “And I would be the one to take you by the hand, lead you behind a closed door. And you would bend over for me, and I would put my cock in your mouth as I work it loose, and then I would be inside you, so loose and so ready. The whole day you were made ready for me, and then I would take you all to pieces and you would _love_ it.”

“ _Loki_.”

“Oh, my brother.” The slick head rubbed over the curve of his ass; desire twisted about his cock as sure as any fist, squeezing, suffocating. “How I will have you!”

The burn of entrance drew from him a strangled shout. Thor could not see from such an angle, but the size of him was a fierce memory: all flushed heat and harsh panting breath. The groan tore at his throat, fighting its way up from low in his aching gut; the heel of a hand pressed to the small of his back, each fingertip steadying, hard, knowing.

“Push back,” he whispered. “Take me in. Let yourself go. Nobody need know it but me.”

Sanity washed over him in cool rush: this was not how it was supposed to be. The crown prince of Asgard should not find his pleasure tied to a wooden frame, his ass high and his pleasure low as his own brother’s cock drove deep within him.

As if sensing his thoughts, Loki’s hands tightened upon his hips; fingernails cut into skin, as if intending to rip free such thought by their very roots. Letting loose a hissing breath, head swimming, Thor gasped out a denial. But then he could not say no. He had never called surrender – not in battle, not in life. Asgard had born him, bred him, raised him to never be afraid of pain, or blood, or even death. The pulse of life beat strongest when the blood of own and others dripped from hand and blade and hammer and bold opened laughing mouth.

 _And never have I felt a pain as true as this_.

The give came sudden, the rounded head slipping inside. The ring of teased tense muscle stretched painful now about the slow slide of the shaft. But the coolness of his skin seemed almost a balm as Loki moved as deep as he might, balls heavy against his burning skin. Long-fingered hands cradled about his ass, a gentle motion so at odds with the roughened drawl of his desire.

“I do believe I shall fuck you now.”

Thor was not ready. It did not matter. The girth of him burned in one sharp drag outward, and then the brutal thrust filled him to the hilt. His own cock pressed fierce and painful against the cushioned frame Loki had bound him to; the motion wrenched from him a shout. Loki cared not, pulling out again so the fat head might graze over that spot he had so skillfully worked with his fingers. Too sensitive by half, Thor writhed, groaned as his cock again burned with friction. But already he was hardening again, the heat within him somehow cold: stark impossibility, a drowning man in the desert. But he did not care. With head thrown back, panting for air, ass pushed back, Thor clenched tight around his brother.

And Loki laughed. “Yes,” Thor hissed, every muscle aflame. “ _Take_ me.”

“You are always and only mine.”

“ _Yes_.” Turning his head, tasted salt and sharp sweet seiðr from his brother’s silvered lips. “But then I claimed you first.”

The thrusts this earned him were both furious and feral. A memory rose, hot and burning: how the other man had been beneath such power, as if Loki was a Valkyrie descended to bear him to Valhalla. In that place now, Thor thought that this might be how it would be to die: bleeding and broken, and laughing through it. The pain of his pleasure, knowing that battles had no sides, only winners and losers both.

It could only be all too soon to come again, but he did all the same. It summoned forth only the vaguest dribble from his cock, but Loki’s laughter trembled through him. Fingers moved down, rolled his balls again; after, they drifted over his thighs. There they paused, then the tips dragged light over the tight skin around the cock buried in his ass. A kiss pressed to the pooling sweat in the groove of his spine, his back bowed, and Loki’s delight shivered between them like a Valkyrie’s cry of war.

“You are so beautiful this way.” A thrust drove deeper yet, the words trembling upon the broken edge of his rising moan. “How could I want anything but to see you broken?”

This time Thor could not deny any of it. He rode it instead, every part of him screaming and alive. It felt like raising Mjölnir to the stars and letting the storm pound through his skin, arrowing through to his bones and his brain, burning with the white-out flame of lightning strike and thunder crash. The heat in him came hard and sudden, his body drinking deep of such gift even as Loki’s fingers raked down his back, branding him, naming him in ways unspoken, known only in body and spirit and heart.

Only then did Loki collapse over him. Long, languid moments passed in which neither moved save for the rise and fall of Thor’s chest, and the press of a cheek upon his back. Loki had not pulled out, but still Thor could feel the come sliding down between his thighs, thick and warm.

And he sighed, shifted, winced at the friction upon his cock. “Will you come to bed, then?”

Loki snorted, and did not move. “You invite me to my own bed?”

“You wish me to leave?”

Fingers tightened upon his arms. “You would stay whether I willed it or not.”

“I am the one tied down,” he observed, and felt Loki’s chuckle more than heard it.

“So it might seem.” With a slow groan Loki levered backward, pulled himself free. Thor could not help but mourn the loss as Loki knelt behind him, fingers quick and sure over the knots binding ankle to the two back legs of the frame. With legs spread just enough, the leak from his hole grew stronger; he clenched down, holding it back, just for a little longer. Loki chuckled again, came around. So graceful in every movement, the thick cock hung before his thighs in the neat nest of dark curls. Thor could not help but stare at it, struck with the sudden longing to taste. When Loki came down again to begin unbinding his wrists, their eyes met. Yet he gave him only a faint smile, and nothing more.

An outstretched hand invited him upwards. Thor did not let it go until they reached the bed, falling forward, landing face down amongst the thick furs. A hand passed over his flanks, dipping down between the crease. It dragged low, and when he turned his face Thor saw Loki thoughtfully sucking a finger. A flare of want stole his breath, eyes shifting again to the cock below. The dizzying need to have it down his throat hit him like a punch to the gut, and he abruptly wanted nothing more than to have it choking all breath and thought from him, eyes blurred with salt and the taste of spill upon his tongue and lips.

Again, he had no words. Loki did not even ask them of him. In an ordinary world Thor would not have thought Loki would be capable of it, fastidious as he had always been. Yet now they lay together under a single sheet, their skins limned with sweat and sex. With legs tangled, Loki’s breath chill against his still-stuttering pulse, Thor stared up at the ceiling. The stars could not be seen, not here. But they would not have changed. They moved through the sky as always, watchful in their age, altering long before their light travelled distance enough that anyone might see what had become of them.

“This is wrong,” he whispered, and Loki’s chuckle rumbled deep in the hollows of his long throat. Fingers danced over the delicate length of his collarbone, a tune somehow both familiar and forgotten.

“Then why did it feel so right?”

The murmur crept through him with dark intent, closing his eyes, shivering over his skin even as Loki’s arms came about him. “It is madness.”

“Ah, that? _That_ , I will grant you.” Again Loki chuckled, the sound sweet against his lips even as Thor felt the low stirring of a cock against his thigh, fingers trailing down over thigh and sac and the trembling flutter of muscles not yet worked to exhaustion. “But then,” he murmured, chaos calling his consort, “I have never wanted anything else but this.”

 _And I have never wanted anything the way I want you_.

But he did not say it aloud. He only opened his legs again, and let his brother in.


End file.
